Duchess of Cambridge given private lessons in workings of the State to groom her for senior Royal duties

The Duchess of Cambridge is being given a series of private briefings on the
workings of Britain’s national institutions to groom her for a lifetime of
Royal duties, aides have disclosed.

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge visits the Summerfield Community Centre in Birmingham. The centre is at the heart of the Winson Green Community which was very affected by the riots last week.Photo: Geoff Pugh

In recent weeks experts on government, the arts and the media have been asked to visit St James’s Palace to give the Duchess one-to-one tutorials to ensure she has a thorough knowledge of the Establishment.

Since she returned from her tour of Canada and the US with her husband in July, the Duchess has carried out only one official engagement, when she and the Duke visited riot-hit areas of Birmingham last month.

But behind the scenes she has been kept busy with a programme of meetings designed to prepare her for everything that her official life will throw at her over the decades to come.

A Royal source said: “The Duchess is being briefed on how the State works, getting to know our national institutions better and learning more about organisations such as the arts, the media and the government.

“It is a process that will carry on for several months but is being done privately.

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“As well as meetings at St James’s Palace, the Duchess is spending time carrying out private research of her own.”

The highly structured approach to preparing the Duchess for life as a senior member of the Royal family is in marked contrast to the experience of the Duke’s late mother, Diana’ Princess of Wales, who complained of being thrown into royal duties with no coaching at all.

The Princess told friends that no forethought had been given to her future role when she married the Prince of Wales, and that Palace staff “basically thought I could adapt to being Princess of Wales overnight”.

The Duke of Cambridge has made it clear since the couple became engaged last November that the then Kate Middleton would be given all possible support in being introduced to the unique demands placed on members of the Royal family.

He was determined that his new bride should not become isolated, in the way that his mother was, insisting that her family should be welcomed into the fold rather than being “airbrushed” from public life as has often happened in the past.

The Duchess, 29, is understood to be dividing her time equally between London, where she is also meeting representatives of charities and good causes to decide which of them she would like to support, and the couple’s home on Anglesey.

She is not expected to make any announcement on her choice of charity patronages until the New Year, and is said to favour “project-based” support for individual charity campaigns rather than necessarily being tied down to a lifetime of support for a set number of charities.

Royal aides have kept the Duchess’s official duties to around one engagement per month until the end of the year in order to give her time to get used to her new life.

Next week the couple will open a new childrens’ centre at the Royal Marsden cancer hospital in Sutton, Surrey, of which the Duke is president.

Away from her official duties, the Duchess is anxious to spend as much time as possible with her husband before his expected deployment to the Falkland Islands with his RAF Search and Rescue squadron next year, which will be an unaccompanied posting.

A source said: “Like any recently-married couple, they attach huge importance to spending time together in the first few months of their married life.”